


i clutched my life, and wished it kept

by yogurtgun



Series: The Vranjska Series [6]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: King's Landing, M/M, Married Couple, Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Sam always brings news which aren't always the best, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:47:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21734218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yogurtgun/pseuds/yogurtgun
Summary: After taking King's Landing, Daenerys needs time to organise her forces. It leaves Jon and Tormund in a particular position that allows them to enjoy a few restful days, and company of people they might consider friends.
Relationships: Tormund Giantsbane/Jon Snow
Series: The Vranjska Series [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1358740
Comments: 27
Kudos: 260





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is definitely that "calm before the storm" chapter. I just wanted us to take a breather before going to Winterfell and the battle. It was supposed to be very short but it got away from me. Hope you enjoy :)

Warm breeze balloons tall curtains that bracket the terrace doors. Their unappreciated gilding fractures the incessant sunlight, attempting to attract attention. Heavy with perfumed oils, forgotten food, and the scent of sex, the air stirs only around the two of them, laying sticky on Tormund’s heated skin, clinging to his lungs and cloying his airway. He’s been in the room for two days now, and has barely moved from the bed.

Jon’s back is far too hot where it presses against his chest. It’s a novelty to be sure, however temporary, and Tormund has been appreciating it when not distracted by Jon’s hands or mouth on his cock, or his bucking hips, just like now, urging Tormund on.

The skin stretched across his shoulders has gone red from Tormund’s beard. Big splotches of purpling bruises litter it in patches, but concentrate between his thighs where Tormund now presses his hand.

Jon’s belly is striped with old release, his cock laying half-full. Tormund doesn’t understand what pleasure Jon gets from this, but each time he pushes in, Jon shudders, his hand squeezing Tormund’s thigh, keeping him from moving away.

The heat is intolerable. He’s covered in sweat, hair wet from it, but Jon doesn’t seem to mind. His fingers coil around Tormund’s locks, holding as he shudders out soft moans that spill over the sheets and curl around Tormund’s ear, making his cock ache. It feels like Jon want to carve out a place for himself within Tormund, slip underneath his skin, be warm. Tormund doesn’t know what it says about him that he wouldn’t mind.

“Tormund,” Jon bites out between soft whimpers.

By now he’s learned that Jon isn’t calling for him. At least not in the sense that he needs him to do anything else other than fuck him into the mattress. Jon hasn’t been proper since they’d stumbled into the room two days ago, as if a fever has swept him up and made him an incoherent and over-sensitive mess. Why Jon kissed him he still isn’t sure, in the same line as he isn’t sure why he still needs it so bad as to go beyond the lines of exhaustion.

Jon begins mewling, hole tightening around Tormund as his cock twitches. It sounds just like when Jon’s near release, and it makes Tormund’s hips stutter, his belly burning up.

“Shit, vranjska,” he curses, his forehead falling to Jon’s shoulder.

He can feel Jon’s trembling grow into proper shaking. Tormund pries Jon’s hand from his hair and pushes until they’re rolling over, Jon on his belly and Tormund on top of him. He only has mind to shift his knee for better leverage before he’s fucking back into him, tempo gone, just chasing his and Jon’s pleasure. The sound of his own jackrabbit heart fills his ears, drowning out the sound of skin slapping against skin.

His thrusts are harsh and hard, too fast, so now Jon can’t even push back. No, Tormund’s pinned him, pressing his fingers into day-old-bruises. Jon’s skin is littered, ruined, crowned with his marks, and he’d asked for every single one of them. Tormund doesn’t know what it means, only that it makes him want to hold Jon down and ruin him.

There’s something tantalizing about the way he’s flushed red -- a rare sight. Tormund manages to press a kiss to one ruby-red ear, trace the color down to the back of his neck before he replaces his mouth with his hand, pushing Jon’s face into the pillows. All of Tormund’s weight settles on Jon and his trembling knees that barely holding him up, barely _withstand_ it, as Tormund rails into him. He’d feel bad, and he will feel bad afterwards, but now he knows Jon wants this. He wants it, he asked for it, and Tormund’s far too close to release to be considerate.  
  
He wraps his fist loosely around Jon’s cock, sensitive now from too much contact, and squeezes. Jon sobs, pitiful and soft, but he doesn’t protest.  
  
There’s nothing to release anymore; he’s made Jon come so many times he’s surprised Jon is hard at all. It twitches in his hand, just as Jon’s pretty little hole, ruined and sloppy from fucking all day, starts sqeezing around him again.  
  
“Come on, I want to feel you come on my cock,” Tormund says as he snaps his hips. “Do you want me to force it out of you, Jon? You know I can.”  
  
To call it shouting would be to give it too much credit. It’s a long, loud, whimper, chopped up between large lungfuls of air Jon can’t get to his lungs as he seizes and twitches, his thighs shaking so hard they would have given by now were they standing.  
  
Tormund curses, and then he’s spilling inside Jon, fucking his come into him as he groans through his orgasm. He doesn’t stop, can’t, until he’s finished and gone soft. It’s difficult to remember the last time they fucked like this though, granted, he can’t remember much of anything as he pulls out and rolls to the empty side of the bed.

“Alright? Jon?” he asks, reaching over. He rests a hand on Jon’s heaving, sweaty back, and gets a soft groan in reply.

If he stays in touching distance he knows Jon will try to curl into him, seeking his warmth, so he lingers only long enough to breathe before sitting up.

They had drawn a bath last night but never gotten around to it. The tub leys hidden behind a privacy screen and Tormund goes to it now to clean up and cool down. His knee isn’t hurting yet, but it’s only a matter of time until the muscles around the injury remember that they should be in pain, not struggling to hold up his weight as he fucks all day.

Tormund takes time with a washcloth, cleaning himself up, washes his hair and beard before dipping into the lukewarm water. He’d been looking forward to the bath last night. King’s Landing has some right ridiculous stuff, from the bathing oils, strange beard sheers, to the salts and soaps that smell like fruit.

Jon doesn’t move throughout, not even as he hears Tormund go about, dressing. He twitches only when there’s a wet rag between his thighs. Jon leaks with his release, and there’s a primal part of Tormund’s mind that loves the sight, even as he cleans it up. He can clearly see the vicious bruises his fingers have left over Jon’s paling skin as well, which grow worse the colder Jon gets. He’s not young anymore to not know better. Rather than sex, Jon looks like he went to spar with a bear and lost. Tormund had forgotten his strength, or perhaps he just couldn’t judge how hard to go. It’d been a while since Jon had gotten pink, a very long while, and Tormund thinks it won’t be happening again any time soon.

“‘m cold,” Jon mumbles finally, turning his face towards Tormund. He cracks an eye open, though it’s barely visible through the mess of greasy black hair. Jon shifts his hand on the sheets as if wanting to reach out to him, but stops before he does. “Come to bed.”

There’s always a lump in Tormund’s throat whenever Jon sounds vulnerable like this. It shows how tired he is, and not from sex. He’s tired on the inside, where it matters. He confessed, when they first got onto the bed and Tormund had touched him and he’d seized, as if Tormund was drawing life out of him and not just touching his skin, that the cold had gotten worse. Perhaps for the first time since he awoke on that slab, Jon wasn’t sad, contemplative not melancholic. He was afraid.  
  
That, Tormund thinks, is more than enough to tell him what it means. Their time is running out with haste.

He wants to move mountains for Jon but if he gets on that bed, he’s going to combust in flames. He’s definitely not meant for King’s Landing. Instead, he takes Jon’s hand in poor comfort.

“How about I draw you a bath and we can get out of the room?”

Jon quirks an eyebrow and Tormund can’t help but bend down to kiss his temple. “We’ve been stuck here for two days. You know people talk. You know how _much_ they talk. And you also know why that’s not good. Not now.”

Jon closes his eyes and sighs. “You’re right. Of course.”

It takes them a bit to navigate what with Jon’s shaking legs, Tormund forgetting to put on his knee brace, and both being exhausted. Despite the challenges, they end up sharing an assortment of cheeses, dried fruit and nuts they’d not finished off the day before while Jon focuses on his steaming new bath. There’s even a bit of lukewarm wine. All in all, Tormund can’t see a reason to complain. Things, he thinks, could have turned out much different. The dragon queen could have easily climbed one of her beasts and burnt them all with the city. Tormund had been preparing for that.

“Ready?” he asks, watching as Jon adjusts his leathers.

Just looking at him makes Tormund hot under the collar, and not because Jon’s beautiful; he thinks his dick won’t be working at least until tomorrow. Jon can’t really sense heat, so Tormund had been helping him pick out clothes so he wouldn’t get heat exhaustion, but even then Jon had drawn a line.

Tormund watches as he sighs once again. There’s a downcurl to his mouth that tells Tormund he’s not liking something, but he knows Jon will come out with it when he’s ready. As he can’t read minds, he can’t help him any sooner than he says anything, so instead he waits until Jon nods, and they finally open the heavy chamber doors.

There’s an inherent urge in Tormund to curl his hand around Jon’s shoulders or his waist, or maybe fold their hands together as they walk the long hallways of the Keep. He has to check them each time he thinks about it. It’s not usually an issue, but Jon’s hair is still damp and his eyes are soft -- softer than they should be, softer than Jon can afford to give him but still does. Tormund’s reminded, not for the first time, that he’s stupidly, infuriatingly in love with Jon.

“We should make an appearance in court,” Jon says though it’s more a suggestion than a command.

“If they’re still staring at the Queen in the chair, I doubt they’ll care about the two of us.”

The dragon queen had marched through the streets, managed to defeat the rest of her opposition via nothing more than words, then decided to sit on the chair while people rotated in and out, looking at her like she was some particularly life-like doll. Tormund isn’t one to comment on customs but considering the reaction, he’s fairly certain that’s not the way things get done.

He likes the dragon queen in a way. He’s sure that if southerners did things the Free Folk way, she would have called Cersei out to a duel. Then again, he knows more about her from Sansa than about the dragon queen--Jon hadn’t been particularly interested in _speaking_ these few days--so he withholds his judgment.

“Let’s go to the gardens,” Jon says, slowing down.

“You have gardens _inside_ a castle?”

Amusement is quick to jump on Jon’s face. “And godswood as well. Sansa told me about them.”

Tormund frowns, following Jon. “What fucker decided to put woods _inside_ a fucking castle?”

“The Red Keep was commissioned by Daenerys’ father,” Jon informs him with a laugh stuck in his throat. “Last I remember the story went that only he and the masons knew the secrets, and Aerys had them all killed afterwards. I’m sure the library has the myth in a book, if you’re keen.”

“Don’t you have maesters to tell you these things?” Tormund asks. They round a corner, ask one of the few servants in sight for directions, then continue on.

“It will take some time until a replacement arrives. The maesters are trained in the Citadel, down south near the Dornish border.”

They finally manage to find the gardens which are, surprisingly, empty.

“Daenerys must not be letting the nobility _mingle_ ,” Jon says, sounding relieved.

Though the gardens are deserted the seating arrangements have been left out, so they find themselves under a tent with a ridiculously detailed leaf embroidery open on all four sides and created, it seems, only to shield from the sun.

They may have picked the worst time to go out. The sun is high in the sky, and the only breeze they get is from the sea, but it’s far from cool. Tormund would give his axe for a jug of water.

Jon doesn’t sit in a chair like Tormund. Instead, he goes to the shin-tall rock wall and sits there, aches be damned, to bake in the sun.  
  
There’s nothing to see. No ships are in sight and the sky is powder-blue like one of Sansa’s dresses, mingling in the distance with the sea. The shallows are a strong gem-green color.

After a while of that, Tormund gets to his feet and stands behind Jon, resting his hands on the warmed leather stretched over Jon’s shoulders. However, when Tormund touches his neck, his skin has become cold once more.  
  
Jon relaxes his spine, and leans into him.  
  
“You know, in the north there are these lizards that also like to sun-bake on large rocks,” Tormund says when the silence stretches.

“Of course you spent time observing lizards,” Jon says in that sort of fond way he always does when speaking to him. It makes Tormund warm all over. He sighs then and says, “Are you calling me an unusually sized lizard, Tormund?”

“Wouldn’t really call you unusually sized. Maybe, medium-ranged?”

Jon looks up, to deliver one of his _looks_ , before returning to gaze at the scenery. “Well. That’s one thing nobody ever accused me of.”

“Snakes too,” Tormund adds.

“Right, next thing you’ll compare me to are medium-ranged eels.”

“Nah,” Tormund says, “you’re too small for that.”

Jon chuckles.

“You think dragons need to sunbathe too?”

“I don’t know,” Jon shrugs. After a while he adds, “I don’t think so. When...when I touched Rhaegal he was warm. If I could sense it, then surely--they sprew fire from their _bellies_ , Tormund.”

Tormund laughs, squeezing Jon’s shoulder. He knows all of that. Jon had told him about Rhaegal in great detail, recounting it as if trying, somehow, to reason through what happened, and to come to a conclusion about what it meant. But sometimes things don’t mean anything, they just happen. Old Gods are too far away to have any influence.

“And we rode the bastards,” Tormund says. “There’s been ten fuckers who did it in the last hundred years, and we’re two of them.”

Jon laughs, and turns onto his hip to look up at him properly. The smile sits well on his face. Jon has always, _always,_ been beautiful. Tormund wishes to lean down and kiss him, and sohe does.

“This is nice,” Jon says, in that sort of way that insinuates the unspoken _“It won’t last”._

“I take it the dragon queen is organising her armies?”

“I would like to think so,” Jon says with a sigh, brow furrowing in a frown. “We lost two days. A third, we can afford, but no more. It’s a month’s march to Winterfell.”

“We’ll get there in time,” Tormund says, because they have to. There’s no chance they’re missing that fight. “Otherwise Sansa will have both of our necks.”  
  
Jon’s smile is still there even when his eyes slip from Tormund’s face and center on something else in the distance. Tormund turns and notices a woman in britches, with her hands held behind her back, approaching now in brisk pace. Arya. The one Stark Tormund hasn’t met properly yet.

Tormund takes a conscious step back, letting his hands drop from Jon. Pretenses.

“Brother,” she nods at Jon. Unlike before, she looks marginally more contained. Then again, Tormund always appreciates some slaughter. He was right, the Starks really like their king-killing.

Jon turns around completely, feet on firm ground. “Arya. You look taller.”

“And you look way shorter,” she laughs.  
  
Jon smiles and gets to his feet. It seems second-nature for them to hug, and Tormund at once feels like an unnecessary spectator. Jon didn’t have time to speak with his sister and he doubts she will be comfortable talking about anything with him present.

After they untangle, Arya’s eyes center on Tormund. They’re strange eyes; not unlike Sansa’s, blue and strong, but like Bran’s as well, distant and far too knowing. Her eyes feel like his own. They feel as if he’s looking at himself in the mirror.

Fear is a primal feeling. It’s well-known to him by now. But death is familiar and well known as well, and he’s never been afraid of a straight razor.

“I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” she says, and her strange, intense eyes stray to Jon with a quirk of a brow.

“Right,” Jon says. “Arya, this is Tormund. One of the Free Folk chieftains that crossed the Wall with me.”

Her handshake is firm. “Long way from the Wall.”

“We’ll get back to it, one way or the other,” Tormund replies. He looks at Jon. “I’m going to get some water. If you’re fine with baking here be my guest.”  
  
Jon nods in thanks, and Tormund turns on his heel, leaving the two alone. He can keep himself entertain some other way. There’s still the whole Keep to see before heading back and he’s fairly certain this is going to be his only chance to explore; whatever happens after the War he will be either too dead to care or alive enough only to venture north.

Tormund has always had a good sense of direction, so he knows the way from which they came. Still somehow, rather than the courtyard he ends up in the kitchens which, all in all, is a better turn of events.

Just like in Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, the kitchens are the warmest place in the castle with a constant stream of rotating visitors. The scale of the Red Keep is more than twice that of Eastwatch, and so it follows that the kitchens are twice as big. Half of the women are preparing vegetables and cutting meat, while the rest carry in large sacks of grain and potatoes. Those closest to the doors turn to look at him. There’s a shout, someone saying something about oil, and in the distance two women colliding.

“Is there something you needed m’lord?” asks one of the women closest to him, one eye on him, the other on one of the large iron skillets.

Tormund tries not to cringe. “Water,” he says.

“Oy, get a jug o’ water ready!”

Tormund sees a look passing across everyone’s face, and knows that none are keen to be stepping away from their duties.

“I can get it myself, it’s fine,” Tormund tells her.

Sceptical, she looks him up and down before directing him to the back of the kitchen, where Tormund sees another door and the sacks of grain and potatoes. The women carrying them in are muscular and go about it as easily as anything. However, Tormund wasn’t raised to skip work, and he has all the time to kill.

He ends up helping not only with the sacks, but with butchering too. Then he sits at the table, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, thinly peeling the potatoes, onions and the rest of stock vegetables. The women break out the wine and they get to talking.

“Don’t matter who sits on there really,” one of them says. “Could be a horse. The stoves still going to be workin’.”

Another chastises her, and she replies with “Wot? It’s true.”

“You came with the new queen, didn’t you?” the other woman asks.

“I came with the King in the North. Who came with the dragon queen.”

That distinction is important. He likes the dragon queen but he also knows kings tend to make stupid decision, and he wouldn’t like getting lumped in hers.

“Oh you’re a northerner? Shoulda known. You don’t speak all posh.”

Tormund wants to say ‘ _more north than you think_ ’ but he holds it to himself.

“I didn’t see this King in the North. Though we did get to see the queen didn’t we?”

There’s a chorus of agreement.

“He’s been busy.” It’s the only real defence he can give. Now that he looks at it, the whole thing is absolutely absurd; here’s the most important shift of power in the world, and the two of them spend two days of the coronation fucking.

There’s a pause in which someone giggles. “That’s what we heard as well.”

Aye, Tormund thinks. The servants always, _always_ , know, and the kitchens know best. After all, any rumours or interesting details the others notice around the castle culminate here, foot servants happy to make the kitchens laugh considering they’re also being fed by them.

“Have to say, this is the first time in forty years I’ve seen a lordling peeling potates,” another, older woman notes.

Tormund laughs. He is no lord, but it seems that nobody listens to him when he says it.

Servants filter in and out of the kitchen fetching wines, ales and water, all looking at him for a long moment before continuing on with their business. As long as he works, they seem happy to tolerate him. At least until the kitchen doors burst open and Tormund sees Birenne shutting them behind her and sighing as if wolves were after her. She turns and spots him. Her eyes round, then she looks back to the doors as if she’d rather face the wolves.

Tormund would be offended if it weren’t so funny.

Finally making a decision, she rounds and marches towards him. Once she’s in spitting distance, she demands, “What are you doing here?”

“Peeling potates,” Tormund echoes. Bent over two buckets and a sack at his feet, he would think it was obvious.

He notices the way the kitchen cooks twitch, especially with Brienne’s towering height. They can’t ignore her, and they can’t really go around her either.

“Come on, you’re getting in their way,” he tells her. Brienne hesitates, then sighs and finds a stool to sit on, next to him. He hands her a knife, and wordlessly they get around to peeling potatoes.

She seems to want to say something, but each time she tries, she clicks her teeth back together. The topic roominates, up until she finally can’t take it and starts with, “The way you left, I thought Jon was ill.”

Ah, Tormund thinks, so it’s concern.

She continues, “I saw Arya and him in the gardens, but I can never tell. He has a...restrained face.”  
  
Tormund blinks away images from the morning in his mind, where Jon definitely didn’t have a restrained face.

“He _is_ ill. But he also likes to fuck so it’s been an effort to balance it all out.” Tormund smirks, and laughs again when he watches her pull a face, a disgusted noise leaving her throat.

“Shouldn’t have asked--”

  
“The concern is appreciated. Jon isn’t really the one to get out of duty for nothing.”

“He isn’t,” she nods, as if she’s reminding herself. “What _is_ his sickness though?”

Tormund stops for a moment, then continues with the peeling. “Wouldn’t know.”

He glances at Brienne and notes her furrowed forehead.  
  
“But how do you know he’s--”

“Because. You know it’s something when you see it. And I sleep most my nights with it. It’s--” Tormund sighs. “It’s one thing having a bum knee like me. Another when you can’t get out of bed when your limbs are frozen and won’t listen to you.”

“I--- you’re right. I apologise.”

“Nothing for it. It’s been like this for three or so years I would say. Only lately it’s gotten worse.”

“Is it because he...”  
  
Brienne doesn’t finish but she doesn’t have to. Not everyone knows what happened at Castle Black, and those who do seem to be intimately involved with the family. Brienne is, after all, Sansa’s knight.

Tormund nods. Jon had said as much; he’d brought back the cold with him from the other side of the grave.

“Now will you tell me why you’re hiding in the kitchen peeling potatoes with me?”

Brienne pulls another face which looks a mix of embarrassment and disgust. Still, she behaves according to rules of fairness, so with great difficulty, she admits, “I’m...hiding.”

Tormund’s still chuckling about it as they wash up, take a jug of wine, two goblets, and say goodbye to the staff. The battlements seem to have been of use more as viewing terraces than actual defence mechanism. Tormund understands why -- the walls stretching inside the Keep don’t really have any more function than to separate two parts. Protection from within. The dragon queen’s father must have been a paranoid bastard. Tormund can imagine that there were guards everywhere once. However now the insides of the castle, he can only assume would have otherwise been full with puny southern nobles, are empty. The new queen only has a handful of guests for whom she doesn’t need guards. Patrols circulate, just in case, but the brunt of the forces is stationed on the battlements looking out to the sea. Maybe she knows she doesn’t need guards when there are still servants around to inform her who pisses where.

They settle under an abandoned awning, in comfortable wooden chairs. Tormund pours the wine and says, “So. What is it?”

“Really nothing to be concerned about. I am able to solve my own problems,” Brienne replies.

Tormund shrugs. He has enough of his own problems to be concerned about Brienne’s, a woman who could probably sway them away if she let her swordhand fly. The only issue really, he sees, is that she doesn’t loosen up enough.

“Fine, be that way. Now, tell me about Sansa. Is she doing alright?”

Brienne seems to soften at the mentions of Sansa, and relax further once she sees Tormund doesn’t poke the topic any further. They talk for a bit. However, no sooner than she’s drowning her first cup does Tormund notice metal glinting in the hot southern sun. He turns, expecting a blade, and instead finds a golden hand.

Brienne catches sight of it too, and the man attached to it. Her back goes ramrod straight. She turns to Tormund, opening her mouth. She shakes her head and says, “I’ll talk with you later.”

She goes in the opposite direction of the man, curling her tail and running away. Tormund, eyebrows raised, turns to watch the man’s crestfallen face. Eventually, his blue eyes land on Tormund’s, and the man seems to take stock of Tormund from his shoes to his face, before nodding to himself, as if Tormund’s told him something. He turns and disappears inside the castle.

Tormund pours himself more wine. He really doesn’t need to know why the Commander of the Lannister armies has been pursuing Brienne enough for her to want to run.

In the heat, with the smell of oleander and the sea, it feels as if the summer will never pass. It’s difficult to even think of the eternal winter marching upon them. Even the sea looks different. Tormund isn’t used to these fine bright colors, isn’t used to the air, to the drink, to the taste and smell, isn’t used to the boats that got them here in the first place. The north is freezing and terrible, there’s always a question of food, always the matter of staying alive, but Tormund never had to wonder if the people he cared about would survive until the morning.  
  
Jon had been cold. He’d been so terribly, terribly, cold even as they ripped apart the frozen furs, striped him of Tormund’s favor, when they got him into the ship cabin. He’d watched him ride a dragon, a beast that wasn’t supposed to exist, a creature of legends told even by Jon’s own mouth. It was just supposed to be storytelling. Tormund embelished his stupid choices, and he though whoever wrote Jon’s history followed a similar line. He hadn’t believed until he saw them. And that belief fled when he saw both man and dragon fall headfirst into the lake, breaking the ice, sinking.  
  
He’d shouted, heart seizing, but it had been lost to the whipping winds that carried him away.  
  
He knew Jon was going to die eventually. They almost died crossing the Wall and almost died fighting the Bolton. Almost, always almost, but never quite. No ponderings and nothing he lived through prepared him to watch that -- watch Jon’s life slip right through his fingertips. He’d blamed himself in the end. He should have grabbed his hand when the dragon was on the ground. He should have done something more than just grasp at empty air.  
  
Tormund drinks his wine and wipes his face with his hand. He thought Jon dead and he’d returned, again, only worse. There’s no fire now that can really warm him. No matter how long Tormund spends coiled around him, his aches don’t go away. He is more dead, in that way, than alive, and Tormund doesn’t think that he has any life left to give to whichever God keeps returning him to Tormund’s arms. Even these bits are fading; now more than ever he sees Jon absent-minded, and he sees the look he gives him sometimes: sad, and terrible, on the verge of tears.

The image of Jon gripping his elbow, leaning onto him with all his weight, a ghostly expression on his face, is still in Tormund’s mind’s eye. He’s seen Jon in worse states than that: he’s seen him in battles covered in blood, or horeshit, or snow, and he’s seen him weak, hanging to life by the skin of his teeth. However, that feels different. That was done unto them, unto Jon. But Jon had been fine when his step stuttered, relatively safe surrounded by walls of the throne room. The sickness had come from inside, given him a deathly pallor, fear in his eyes, pain on his face, and Tormund could do nothing about it. There was no enemy to kill and nothing to heal.

Lost in his musings, he barely notices Clegane until the man is just in front of him.

He sits, looks at the abandoned goblet, throws what’s left of the wine into the bushes and pours himself a fresh cup.

“You’re the only one of these fuckers that’s got the right idea,” Clegane finally says, sounding as grumbly as he usually is.

“They all still staring at the dragon queen?”

“Like she’s the last cunt in Westeros.”

Tormund chuckles. “They are afraid of her.”

“She has two fucking dragons and her dear old _dad_ was a right prick. Anyone sane is.” He drinks. “Guess that’s writing you out of the equation.”

Tormund isn’t afraid of the dragon queen. He’s wary as anyone with a little more than a draft between his ears would be. He’s wary of many things, including but not limited to dragons, cart wagons, spoiled dairy and string beans. His _fear,_ on the other hand, resides just left of his heart, nestled in Jon’s hands. He doesn’t want to watch the man die. It’s a fear he’s been holding ever since he’d watched Jon brought onto the ship, death only a kiss away.

“Nah,” he says. “Only one thing I’m afraid of.”

Clegane snorts. “Yeah. You and your whitewalkers. Though suppose we’ll be marching north soon to fight the fuckers.”

“ _From your mouth to the Gods’ ears_ ,” Tormund murmurs. He pushes himself on his feet. “Keep the wine. The sun’s killing me. Don’t know how you can stand it here.”

“Try wearing armor in high summer,” Clegane replies.

He leaves the battlements, heading the way Clegane had come from. Passing through the halls, somehow Tormund ends up in another courtyard, only this time there’s a large tower in it. He circles the thing and sees none other than Beric standing awkwardly at the doors, not coming in, but looking on from the doors. Tormund goes to him.

“What is this thing?” he asks after a cursory greeting.

“The royal sept,” Beric replies. He sounds amused when he asks, “Do you want to go in?”

“Is this all about these new gods everyone around here keeps swearing to?” Tormund’s read the book on Westeros, but he can hardly remember anything about the new gods.

Beric nods towards the doors, and together they walk inside. The ceilings are too high, is the first thing Tormund thinks. They walk the marbled floors with a silent step, Tormund looking up at every statue while Beric runs a slow commentary. “The seven represent the seven facets of life: the Father, the Mother, the Maiden, the Crone, the Warrior, the Smith, and the Stranger. This religion came with the Targeryans from Valyria.”

“Seems too complicated to me,” Tormund tells Beric, who laughs.

“I take it the old gods are worshipped differently?”

“Our gods aren’t kept in pretty houses. They’re everywhere around us, in streams, in forests, in beasts. You worship them in front of the weirwoods, through which they can watch over you. That is all.”

“There are no weirwoods down south,” Beric says morosely.

Tormund has had enough of these strange gods and weird men in dresses glaring at him. “Let’s leave this place.”

Beric agrees. It seems that the Light of the Seven doesn’t suit him anymore either. It wouldn’t. After all, whichever God decided to grant Jon so many chances has also granted Beric life beyond life, even after being slaim many times. Clegane had something to say about it when they went beyond the Wall.  
  
They walk the halls together, talking, but Tormund is distracted all throughout it. He remembers they’d burned his priest -- the man who kept bringing him back to life. Even Beric has only one life left. The thought troubles him more than he wishes it did.

“Ah, look. It seems they have a godswood,” Beric tells him.  
  
He extends his hand and Tormund nods. They descend into the cluster of trees, curated true, and hardly looking like proper woods. Still, Tormund recognizes the alders and elms and birches, and for the first time, that he belongs.

The godswood is quiet and the heart tree seems to be an old oak -- a bad replacement for what can no longer be. Perhaps in time, if they survive, he can bring a sapling of a weirwood.

Tormund’s been putting off thinking about what will happen next but here, reminiscent of the trees outside of Winterfell, he knows their time is running out. Yet, he can do nothing but wait. He cannot help his people immediately, he cannot see his children, and he cannot help Jon. It grates.

“Beric, are you...cold?” he asks.

The man gives him a curious look. “In King’s Landing? This is the warmest I’ve been since leaving the north.”

“Ah so you can feel it.”

“The heat?” Beric’s expression is puzzled. He turns towards Tormund and asks, “Are you quite alright, friend?”

Tormund nods. Confusion is evident on Beric’s face when he asks, “And you can’t?”

“Not me,” Tormund replies, irritable. “Jon.”

There’s a soft,” Ah.” In a manner much less awkward than Tormund thought anyone could be, Beric asks, “He can’t feel it at all?”

Tormund shakes his head. “You’ve come from the dead before. Thought you’d know.”

“Well. It isn’t the doing of the God of Light. I’m quite the opposite in fact. I feel as if there’s a fire under my skin, burning up instead of. Well. Instead of life.”

Before Tormund can say anything else, Beric’s eyes wander behind him and he says, “Seems you have a visitor.”

Tormund expects Jon. He is prepared for him. After worrying, despite not wanting to worry, he wishes to do nothing more than wrap him in his arms and hold him for a little while in this faux forest. But, when he turns, he doesn’t spot Jon. Instead, it’s his sister that’s standing at the doors and looking expectant, hands folded behind her, observing them with her large pale eyes.

Spotted, she starts moving forward, passing Beric on his way out, and stands next to him. “Knew I’d find you somewhere around here.”

“You finished with the ribbing?” Tormund asks.

Arya smirks. Now that he looks at her, the two siblings really do look familiar. Same dark hair, same eyes, and something in her face that just reminds Tormund of Jon.

“On my part. Sansa will be doing the rest. Though recently she’s learned to pull that face. You know the one -- eternal disappointment. Though I’m sure you’re taking care of the rest.”

“Can’t put two dogs together and expect them not to bark,” Tormund says. Or fuck. But that’s another thing entirely.

Amused, Arya says, “Sansa told me about you.”

“I’m sure she did,” Tormund replies. They walk onwards.

“You know I lived here for a time. My father was the Hand of the King so me and Sansa went to King’s Landing with him. I loved it here.”

Tormund snorts. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“It was _the_ place to be, unlike the boring north.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“So. Tell me about yourself.”

Tormund, for a moment, wants to say, _‘I like to drink, kill, and I’m shagging your brother.’_ Only knowing Jon would be disappointed holds him back.

“I hate this bloody heat for one.”

They find shade. From the greenery, Tormund notices Ghost’s white fur. He comes towards Tormund, noses against his thigh, and looks at him as if judging him for his clothing choices. Then he continues on to Arya to sniff at her.

“The servants got twitchy with him in the halls, so the godswood was the best place to take him,” Arya informed him, sounding mildly amused.  
  
Arya had come by to check on Jon just after Tormund had laid him to bed, but retreated once she understood she could do nothing. Ghost went with her. A good thing now, Tormund thinks.

She pats Ghosts’s flank, continuing, “Jon said you wanted to come with him here.”

“We were supposed to go to Dorne to begin with.” A distant promise now, almost from another life.

“You got a shit deal then.”

Tormund believes that. Winterfell was the biggest castle he’d seen in his life until now. To come to King’s Landing, which has millions of people in it, to the Red Keep, three times the size of Winterfell, makes him uncomfortable in his own skin. It also makes him realise that the Free Folk are the sanest people out of the whole lot.

“Well,” Arya says after Ghost disappears into the foliage. “You’re not too terrible considering you’re family now.”

Tormund feels his eyebrows going up.

Arya’s posture relaxes, her speech returning to her normal cadence. She has a little smile when she adds, “Jon told me. And Sansa. But it’s Jon that counts.”

Tormund laughs. “No secrets in the family huh?”

“We thought it prudent, considering the absolute mess our parents left behind, to do better.”

Tormund nods. It is their duty to do better then those before them. That duty now lies in Drys and Munda’s hands. He smiles at Arya, and in jest says, “Jon said our marriage was unconventional. I was expecting a threat of some kind. At least a little blood you know, to balance it out.”

He should be insulted that none came. He, at the very least, expected to have to fight someone, get the blood pumping.

The woman in front of him laughs. “I trust Sansa’s judgment, if not Jon’s, to be unclouded. And Jon _did_ put it all so very nicely.”  
  
There’s more she’s not saying, Tormund can see it in the amused twist of her mouth.

“I don’t know if you lot down here are madder than us or too civilized,” Tormund replies.

“Depends on who you ask. If you want I can give you some warning. Maybe cut somewhere non-vital?”

Tormund considers the bragging rights of having a scar from the queen-killer, at which idea he brightens. Alas, it is not quite right.  
  
“Nah,” he says regretfully, “it has to be battle, you know?”

Arya shrugs in that sort of way that says ‘suit yourself’. She nods at him, and leaves, going further into the woods. Tormund, on the other hand, goes in search of her brother.

-

Tormund finds Jon at the doors of the gardens. Relief washes over him at the sight of the man, the kind that tells him exactly how comfortable it is being with him, and how much Jon has become a part of him. One never tires of oneself after all, and Tormund could never tire of Jon.

“Lunch time has passed,” Jon tells him when he’s near enough that Tormund can smell the oils he used in his hair that morning. For a moment he indulges, letting a hand rest on the crook of Jon’s elbow. If they were not in public he would have curled a hand around Jon, let the man collapse into him as he so often is wont to do.

“You hungry?” Tormund asks.

Jon chuckles. “No, Arya and I had lunch, but I was worried you were.”

Tormund smirks, letting go of Jon so they can start walking. “Don’t worry. The kitchen ladies treated me very well.”

Jon looks amused at the thought. He ticks up a questioning eyebrow as they pass through the innumerable hallways, all looking similar to the other.

“They didn’t put you to work did they?” He laughs softly when Tormund nods. “You can tell me about it in the room. I think I’m about ready to end this day.”

Tormund grunts in agreement. Too many people today.

He should have known it couldn’t be that easy. The new guards are harder to hear but they still lumber under the weight of their spears and shields, and the couple coming in their direction are difficult to ignore. They stop the two of them near the exit to the courtyard and one of them says in a careful and practiced common, “Guest for you.”

There’s no ‘my lord’ tacked onto the end which is a miracle in and of itself. Tormund likes them. Then they part to reveal a plump young man which, Tormund realizes, is familiar.

“Sam!” Jon exclaims. The guards, seeing their job’s done, leave.

Jon flies towards the man and they wrap their hands around one another in a tight hug. Brother from the Watch, perhaps. Tormund tries to puzzle it out while the two clap each other’s shoulders. He doesn’t need to see Jon to know he’s smiling. There’s just something in his posture that radiates it.

  
“What are you doing _here_ ? Did you read _all_ the books in the Citadel already?” he asks tactlessly and so freely it tells Tormund more than he needs to know. When Jon doesn’t watch his words it means he’s with true friends and with family. Then it clicks: Sam, who sent the letter about dragonglass, Sam, the sworn brother he sent to be the new Maester.

“Ah, well, it’s a long story really,” says the other man. “But. Thankfully it paid off? I mean. Daenerys Stormborn is _here_.”

“Did you go see her?”

“I couldn’t pass it up! Everyone was talking about it, said commoners were allowed in the throne room! Gilly is still there I think.”

“How is she? And Sam Junior?”

Tormund decides to cut in here, before the talk goes on and he’s standing for an hour listening to them _chat_. “Didn’t think brothers of the Watch could marry.”

Jon seems to remember himself because he half-turns towards him. As he approaches he can see how Sam’s eyes go to his face, then to Jon, then to Tormund again as if he’s trying to piece it together.

“That’s why he’s not married,” Jon replies. He seems blind to Sam’s increasing panic.

“Oh then he just has a child out of wedlock? How wildling of him.”

“Jon what--”

“I don’t think you were ever properly introduced. Tormund, this is my best friends, Samwell Tarlly. Sam, Tormund Giantsbane.”

Sam starts stuttering, looking tense and uncomfortable. He supposes that’s the reaction others would get if they knew he’s of the Free Folk, or they ever crossed over the Wall.

Ignoring the man, Tormund look at Jon. “Want me to leave you two to talk?”

“I--” Jon glances to his friend and sighs. “Maybe that’s the best.”

“Want to take it to the room?”

The implications are clear: honesty necessitates privacy, and Tormund would loathe for Jon to have to lie to his friend. Catching the meaning, Jon gives him a questioning look, as if asking if Tormund’s sure. Tormund inclines his head. He wouldn’t mind. He is sure.

Jon considers it and nods.

Tormund sighs and heads away, leaving the two friends to talk. Exiled from his room, he decides that perhaps he should go check up on the dragon queen, and see what entertainment he can find.

-

Eventually, he finds his way to the throne room. It’s difficult to miss, considering its size, but he misses the courtyard exits until he’s in the bowels of the Keep, and realizes he’ll have to circle around to get to the throne from the outside when it’s too late to turn back. The servants running the hallways help, pointing out the servants passageways that lead him to the throne room from inside.  
  
He thinks he shouldn’t have bothered when he actually gets to it. The crowd has flooded the entire room, raising the already high temperatures, the noise of their constant chattering so loud it’s vibrating the glass panes. The dragon queen is sitting in her seat, looking at them, and doing nothing else at all. He supposes that Tyrion is handling the actual issues. Or maybe they planned this so well they were ready in advance. Difficult to tell. Daenerys Storborn looks like that always-prepared person to him. Like Karsi was. Like many of the Free Folk women leading their own clans have to be.

Up on that iron chair, so high above the crowd, she doesn’t look like the woman who had let him kick everyone out of the cabin after the doctors were done with Jon. She doesn’t look like the person who’d come to him afterwards, when he’d been trying to deal with Jon actually being alive and barely managing, who laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “The two of your are going to be just fine, Tormund.” She doesn’t look like a person who could smile at all, which she had done in abundance, laughing at Jon on Dragonstone, amused by him as if he weren’t near her age but ten years younger. She doesn’t look like someone he heard speak so freely with her advisors or be gentle with her friends and she’d been brittle and distraught when Missandei wrapped her up in her arms after they boarded the ship. She lost a child. One of her dragons. And she looked human then, despite the eyes and the hair, and the magic. She was real like the Red Witch never was.

Tormund really shouldn’t have come. There will be time to look at the dragon queen and talk with her when she isn’t a doll, when she has both of her feet planted on the ground and they’re marching into their last battle.

He searches the crowd with his eyes. Jon told him about his friend and his wildling wife, but with so many people there he can’t spot her. Nevermind, he thinks. There will be time to commiserate with one person who understands how strange it is that they’re both there later.

Davos, he notices only after the man does him, and Tormund breathes a sigh of relief. At least one reasonable person here. Davos motions towards the doors and Tormund motions to the back entrance he assumes is for the lords, which is definitely the easier way to go. Davos disappears and resurfaces red in the face, probably having earned a few elbows in the ribs for the effort.

“Didn’t think I’d live to see this,” Davos tells him, nodding towards the crowd.

“Looks pretty much like that horde of wights,” Tormund replies, just to make the man screw his face up. He laughs at him, and they head out to the courtyard.

There’s a moment, just before they slip from the shadowed hallways of the Keep, that Davos asks, “How are you holding up?”  
  
The look in his eye is knowing. Worse, Davos looks actually concerned. Tormund didn’t think he was so obvious.

“I’m fine, Davos. Jon--”

Davos cut him off, saying, “The King in the North will be just fine. Who I’m enquiring about is _you_ .”  
  
Despite himself, Tormund laughs. He wipes his tired face with one hand, and sighs. It’s been a long day. Maybe he should have just stayed with Jon in bed, his dick falling off be damned.  
  
“This whole thing is fucked,” Tormund says. He even feels his shoulders sagging. Damn. “I just want us to get a move on. Get this thing over with.”  
  


“There’s no use rushing to our deaths, Tormund,” Davos replies. “We’ll get there eventually anyway.”  
  
Tormund laughs but it’s too dry. “I’m not rushing to see anyone dead. It’s not me wanting to die, it’s like learning how to piss in cold. You have to whip out your dick eventually.”  
  
Davos’ face scrunches up but he laughs. “Alright,” he says, through it, “Alright. I just wanted to be sure.”

They’re in the courtyard when Tormund remembers to ask, “Where’s the boy?”

“Gendry’s probably in the stables or the smithy. Ever since he saw dragonglass he’s been trying to make better weapons out of it.”

Productive, Tormund thinks with approval. “He should rest while the getting’s good.”

“Young people,” Davos says, amused. “They don’t listen to old men like us anymore.”

Tormund purses his lips, and Davos sighs, knowing what that means. They head for the smithy, and true to Davos’ words, Gendry is there, toiling away.

“Alright,” Tormund shouts, “what does a cunt around here have to do to get some rest?”

Gendry startles, then looks up at the two of them, exasperated.

“Lunch,” Tormund offers. Even standing at the doors, just looking inside the smithy has him nauseous from the waves of heat coming off the furnace. “Come on, you’ve been stuck here the whole day. See a little of the Keep before we pack up and go north.”

“I still have two swords to finish.”

Tormund smirks. “Yes, yes you’ll be polishing those swords in no time, but after lunch.”

He hears Davos’ chuckle at the innuendo, and even Gendry himself, grimy from the ash and tanning oils, seems to catch the joke because he huffs and shakes his head. At least it gets him to the water bucket.  
  
Gendry cleans himself up as best he can, which is not really much, but he’s presentable enough to be allowed to enter the smaller gallery where they’re just in time to get some early supper.

They sit, and only when they’ve wolfed down the food and gone half-way through the ale, does Tormund say, “I don’t know how you can stand hammering away in this heat.”  
  
Gendry shrugs. “I’ve been working the pit in King’s Landing for a while.”  
  
Tormund looks at Davos, who shakes his head in compatriotic empathy. They’ve really grown old. “There is a chance that it has something to do with...well. His parentage,” Davos comments.

The tentative smile resting on Gendry’s young face twists, his whole expression at once overcast by his frown.  
  
“We shouldn’t talk about this here,” he says, low, just for their ears.  
  
Some of it, Tormund knows just from hiking through the ice and snow with him and the--as Jon had called them--Brotherhood without Banners. They’d sold Gendry to the Red Witch. For magic, Tormund assumed then, and for blood. But Gendry, cold, teeth chattering, confused and young, and being made the fool by a line of aging men that will be dead sooner than he, couldn’t tell him what his blood was for. There, Davos had intervened as well. For visions, he’d said. For her magic to work.  
  
Now that he looks at the two of them, it seems that the same thought is in all of their heads.  
  
“What’s so special about it?” Tormund asks.  
  
“The lad wouldn’t know,” Davos says, “since Baratheons formed their own house and distanced themselves well from the reputation, but they are cousins with the Targeryans. And our queen _is_ called the Unburnt. Now that magic is real...”  
  
“Or, perhaps, this has only to do with you two being old,” Gendry says with that sort of finality that, were he older, might have cut the conversation short.

Tormund understands to an extent. Why talk about his heritage here, in a nest of vipers who could strike at any moment? Tormund doesn’t understand the politics too much, but he knows which king overthrew which, and he knows about history repeating itself. The only question remaining is whether the dragon queen will remain lenient to all of those who betrayed her family once, just as she’s been lenient to Jamie Lannister.  
  
Then, a though strikes him: the Red Witch didn’t need any blood to bring Jon back. She had his hair, his nails, and her words, but that was all. Who is Jon then, to be brought back to life for a hand full of nothing?  
  
Something in that thought is important but Tormund can’t grasp it, not before he gets distracted by Gendry asking, “How’s Jon?”

Jorah, Gendry and Podrick had gone to find Ellaria Sand and Yara Greyjoy and free them. It was a stealth operation, as Tormund was informed later, and so they joined the entourage only after the queen had entered the throne room. In time, at least, to watch Tormund and Jon leave with a small retinue of guards around them.

Jon had seized, shuddering as if left out in the late winter night, shivering so hard his teeth had started chattering. Ellaria had released his hand, shocked, she herself weak on her legs, but Arya had caught her while Tormund caught Jon. It wasn’t a commotion. It couldn’t be. But he’d seen the worried eyes on Gendry and Beric, his sister, the guards stiffening as if Jon had been struck by an arrow.  
  
He’d been looking at the floor the entire time, trying to breathe, getting heavier the longer it went on, his strength leaving him, so Tormund had made a decision. They weren’t needed anymore anyway; the dragon queen was sitting on her chair, and the speech was done.

Even Jorah had turned to look at the cause of the sudden whispering, and it was his quick thinking that instructed the guards to lead them away to the private rooms through the hallways reserved for royalty and gentry.

“Better,” Tormund finally replies.

Gendry looks at Davos, then asks, “Is it from the fall?”

Tormund should probably lie and say yes. It’s a miracle that Jon only had bruises and no broken bones after nosediving with a dragon. He wishes, more than ever, that he knew how to explain it.

It’s Davos that replies in his stead. “Jon died, Gendry, and was brought back with Lady Melissandre’s magic.”

Gendry pales, as expected. That’s normal reaction to magic.

“My theory is,” Davos continues, “that he brought something back with him. Or left something behind.”

“Then the fucker died again, beyond the Wall.”

Davos draws up short. He frowns and says, “We don’t know that for sure.”

“He fell, with a dragon, into a lake. I don’t have to tell you that it isn’t smart being wet in whipping cold wind, outside, during winter. His heart should have stopped. I’ve seen it happen plenty before.”  
  


He’d felt something, a tug perhaps, a change in the air, and he was sure he’d never see him again. It was why he was so mad when Jon had woken up. He hadn’t cried from sadness, or from relief, in a long time but he did so then.

Davos doesn’t argue the point further. Capitulating, he tells Gendry, “So it’s no wonder, you see, that he might be affected.”

“Didn’t....didn’t Beric die as well?”

“He did. But we didn’t know how he was before he’d been brought back. Who knows how death changes you.”

“One thing is sure,” Tormund says. ”It takes, and it takes, and I’m pretty sure we all only have one life left to give. And the War is coming.”

By the time they leave the gallery, it’s early nightfall, the sun finally deciding to meet the horizon. Thank fuck.

“Tyrion mentioned something about a gathering,” Davos informs, happy enough to strey from somber topics.

“We should get drunk,” Tormund nods in agreement. “At least while we still have good wine.”

Gendry laughs at this, then turns his head and is struck in place at once. Tormund stops and turns to follow Gendry’s line of sight which lands squarely on Arya who, in turn, is looking back at him. Oh no, he thinks, leering. Love at first sight? Gendry _would_ be the type to fall easily.

He watches as Arya changes her course and heads for them, runs at the last bit, same as Gendry. They meet halfway there, his arms flying open just before she leaps into them. Gods above, Tormund thinks he might be ill.

  
“I take it they know each other?”

Davos shakes his head. He doesn’t know either.

“Come on,” he claps Tormund on his shoulder. “Let’s find that wine.”


	2. Chapter 2

Tormund departs with his usual graces leaving Jon to collect Sam’s scattered words and messy thoughts, settle them with a hand around his shoulders and guide him away from the hallways where anyone might hear them.  
  
“A lot happened,” Jon says in lieu of explanation. “We haven’t talked in a long time, my friend.”  
  
However, Sam’s shock doesn’t settle until the doors to his--thankfully cleaned--room are closed, he’s sat down at the table, and Jon’s pushed a goblet of wine into his hands.  
  
“Jon,” Sam starts, “I know we’ve been friends for a long time but could you please, using very small words, explain to me exactly what a Wildling _chieftain_ is doing in the Red Keep?”

Despite the situation, Jon cannot help but be amused. It’s been a long time since he’s been afraid of Tormund, the Free Folk, or noticed that fear in other northmen as anything but contempt. Then, dressed in western clothes, his husband had only cut a sharp look as any high-bread lord. Sam’s reaction, while amusing, also reminds him of who Tormund really is. It helps him remember the old days when he’d been ‘baby crow’ and not ‘vranjska’ and rather than an equal Tormund had been someone grander than him: more trusted, more experienced, scar-covered elder who’d been the one deciding whether Jon would live or die. A man so large, and cumbersome, so striking, that he could be mistaken for the King-Beyond-the-Wall.

It’s with a smile that he says, “The news of the Free Folk crossing the Wall should have made it to the Citadel I hope.”  
  
“It did,” Sam agrees. “But only after the fact, and after the Battle of the Bastards, when you were named King.”  
  
“Some of the brothers, Tormund and I went to Hardhome, and we got as many people on Stannis’ boats before the Others came. And the wights. Then I died.”  
  
Sam lifts an eyebrow. Perhaps he knows Jon too well. He isn’t one for the dramatics. So, using small words, he tells his friend about his death, rebirth, the perpetual cold in his veins that he brought from the sleep, and he tells him about the battle--staying on it only short enough to tell of Sansa since neither Jon nor Sam have ever cared for bloodlust-- about sending Tormund to man Eastwatch and going to Daenerys, about his return north, and everything that has lead up to finally confronting Cersei, and finding a sister in the process.  
  
Sam listens and, much as it is unlike him, doesn’t interrupt. He nods, and hums, and drinks, and pours himself more when Jon refuses a goblet for himself, and eventually the night falls and a servant knocks on the doors to light up the candles.  
  
During the time the woman is there, which is a short and practiced amount, Jon goes quiet and Sam says, “And I thought _my_ life was exciting. I went home, to Horn Hill, with Gilly and baby Sam. Father was there, of course. He made a terrible deal out of it. But I was more happy to see mother and brother to be honest.”

“The Citadel was nothing to brag about then?”  
  
“Oh,” Sam colors. “It was very interesting, in that I spent most of my time copying over mite stricken books and cleaning out chamber pots.”  
  
The doors close softly behind the servant, the whole room comfortably alight with waxen candles.

Sam continues, uninterrupted. “Except that I, once, managed to cure greyscale. I did the whole procedure and everything, and on Commander Mormont’s son no less! I owned it to him to try.”

Jon’s eyes widen. “Jorah Mormont? He is here.”  
  
“He is?” Sam asks, confusion coloring his face.  
  
“He is the Queen’s good friend. One of the oldest, it seems to me. He went over the Wall with us. I will tell him you’re here when I can.”  
  
“Please don’t,” Sam says, face blotchy from the flush. “I wouldn’t want to impose, the man’s gone through enough as it is.”  
  
Jon smiles. Sam, sometimes reckless with his words in the heat of the moment, has always had the particular and singular ability to remain humble, and Jon loves him for it.  
  
“Did you hear from you brother recently?”

Sam shakes his head. “I probably won’t after...well, I sort of stole the family valyrian steel sword.”

Jon blinks. “You stole...the family heirloom.”  
  
“It’s not like they would use it for our sort of purposes! And I figured out if dragonglass could kill the Others, Valyrian steel, also created by dragons, might do the same!”  
  


Jon looks at him, baffled for a moment, before giving into the laughter. He’s heard terrible things about Sam’s father, most of which came down to family pride, manliness, and house loyalty. Sam’s revenge is, in that matter, perfect.

“Don’t laugh! Look, I...Jon you actually died. I mean _actually_ died. What was that like? Did you see-- I mean, what about the Light of the Seven?”  
  
“There was nothing there, Sam,” Jon says, growing somber. “Only the cold. And it crawled inside me, and it woke with me.”

Jon sighs, and as he lifts his hand to rub his face, he hears his joints cracking. He’s been still for too long again. He can’t feel his body anymore, can’t tell what hurts, and can barely tell what feels good -- more a ghost of a sensation he has to chase than it’s full flavour. He fears, should he forget himself, he might grow into an ice block, and be trapped within it, seeing, hearing, but unable to do anything. With magic existing, with dragons, the White Walkers, the wights, Red Witches, and shadow monsters, he isn’t sure it wouldn’t be possible.

“Oh. But still. You freed your home. You rode a dragon! Not many people could do that.”  
  
“You sound like Tormund,” Jon smiles. “He is very proud that he gets counted in with the people who rode dragons this side of the century.”  
  
Sam chuckles, but his face grows somber. “Who’d think,” he says, “that we thought _they_ were our enemies. And now...”

He shakes his head, and his somberness grows into nerves.  
  
“What is it?” Jon asks. They have known each other long enough that Jon can tell when things were important.

“What do you think of her? Daenerys.”  
  
Jon sighs. He doesn’t wish to talk about politics. “What is this about Sam?”  
  
“People talk, as you know. And when you’re someone like me--well. I hear a lot of things. Daenerys is young, and unwed, and the Crown, until recently, has always belonged to a King.”

  
If it’s only that, Jon thinks, then there is nothing to worry about. He chuckles with relief. “Daenerys Stormborn is not going to be marrying anyone any time soon.”  
  
“But would you like to? It would be good, for the North.”  
  
Jon feels nerves of his own wake in his belly. He loves Sam. The man has been his friend the longest, from the grueling training under Ser Alistor, and has always supported his every decision no matter how bad. There were things they agreed on, back then, but both of them have changed since they were children. He wouldn’t wish for Sam to hate him. Worse, he wouldn’t wish for him to be disgusted. Quite on the contrary, he wants the man to be happy _with_ him, for however long his happiness might last.

Taking a fortifying breath, he finally says, “I don’t want to marry Daenerys, but it’s also that I can’t seeing how I’m already married.”

The shock on Sam’s face is bested only by his loud yelp. “What?” he demands, “With whom?”  
  
“Tormund,” Jon replies. He watches as Sam’s face breaks and he laughs, slumping back into his chair.  
  
“Ha,” he says, “So I see you’ve finally found your humour. High time I think.”  
  
“No, Sam,” Jon corrects, trying to keep his voice calm. “I am serious. Our affair started when we were crossing the Wall, and we wed in Winterfell, in the godswood, under the weirwood tree.”  
  
Sam looks at him, face cooling of his laughter, and growing serious once more. Jon tries to maintain that eye contact, thought disappointment threatens to be bitter cure to his expectations.  
  
“You’re serious,” Sam says, now quiet.  
  
Jon nods. “I wouldn’t lie to you, not about this. Not about him.”  
  
“But,” Sam starts, falters, and stops himself. He seems to try wrapping his head around it, an ultimately futile effort. “He’s a _man_ .”  
  
It’s said so honestly, that Jon cannot keep himself from laughing. “I’ve noticed.”  
  
“No, I mean-- do our laws recognize that sort of marriage?”  
  
Jon shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is what we think of each other, and it matters that the Old Gods had seen to confirm our vows.”  
  
Sam seems to grow serious and nods, as if he’s finally heard something he needed to hear.  
  
Jon watches as he unplucks the fastenings of his large leather overshirt, and removes from one side a tome that, to Jon, appears huge, but only takes a portion of Sam’s side.  
  
“Robert’s Rebellion started because, according to history, Rhaegar kidnapped Lyanna, and did away with her. Later, your father found her dead in the Tower of Joy.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Jon asks but Sam ignores him in favour of opening the large tome to a marked page.  
  
“Look,” he says, “the High Septon wrote it all down. Lyanna wasn’t kidnapped, Jon. She loved Rhaegar. She went with him to Dorne and married him in secret ceremony.”  
  
Jon feels a sudden cold wash over him, and not the kind that haunts him. It’s the cold with which one realises that what they’ve seen is only shadows, it’s the realization that they’re lost in the woods, going north instead of south, the realization that the stag has never been a stag at all.

“Do you understand?” Sam urges. “Robert rebelled because he loved her! He did it _for_ her. But who would have known to tell him she had been taken? Your father, and his brother. But who told them?”  
  
“Somebody lied,” Jon realizes. Somebody spun a line, and sang it to the right ears.  
  
Sam nods. “Somebody lied, and Westeros bled. The whole war was fought on false pretenses. Robert...fought for a woman who didn’t even want him.”  
  
Jon uncovers his mouth. This information is perhaps not vital right now but it is something. It has worth, at least to his family, to the Starks, and to the Targeryans.  
  
“Sam this is--” Jon trails off, reading the passages that Sam has pointed him to. Only after he’s finished and has sat back, he says, “My father was always pained about her. He barely spoke about her. We all knew there had been a great loss but this-- this is important for the whole damn Westeros to learn.”

Sam flushes, and smiles a small satisfied smile. Then his belly gives a sound of protest, and Jon feels himself relaxing. “Let’s have dinner.”

-

Before departing, Sam leaves the tome with Jon, and a promise to talk tomorrow. Jon summons a servant to guide his friend out and find him a proper place to stay, before retreating to his room and opening the tome to read the words one more time. He wonders, then, what else he knows now that is a lie. What else does the world know that might be shadows?

Jon thinks, not for the first time, of Bran and Rickon. Poor Rickon, who’d been slain before his time, and Bran who, if Tormund’s right, has become something else entirely. There are no more weirwoods in the south, but something tells Jon that now, for the Three Eyed Raven, that doesn’t mean much at all.  
  
Tormund has attempted to explain the best way he could, but all Jon understood was visions, and warging, and eyes looking at everyone at all times. He understood it as being the eyes of the Old Gods. But in this time, when the Light of the Seven is a sham and the God of Light brings people from the dead, where are the old gods? Or perhaps, Jon thinks trying not to horrify himself, what are they?

Lies and illusions. How much has been lost to history? What might have they forgotten over centuries? It’s said the children of the forest carved the faces in weirwood trees for the Old Gods to see them. What if someone else can see them thanks to that as well? What if the gods that he has always prayed to, the Gods he thought he’d find in the forests, in the streams, in the beasts, are nothing but that which they wanted to find within themselves, men made tales to glorify themselves? What if, on the other hand, they’re the Others, that now march upon them to slaughter them all?

Would gods take human shape? Jon isn’t sure. But the old gods are silent. Perhaps, he thinks, they were never there.

-

Lost in thought, and with the tome under his hand, Jon leaves his room and heads for the one place he knows he’ll find help for certain: Tyrion’s chambers. Yet, before he can go any further, he round the hallway and sees Missandei’s back and next to her, Daenerys. Jon thinks of not bothering them. He thinks of leaving as silently as he has come upon them. But something must give because Missandei turns, and stops in her tracks, signaling that Daenerys should take stock of whatever she sees as well.  
  
When the Queen turns she looks far more tired than she ever did, sitting up on that chair. Perhaps distance smooths out imperfections.  
  
“Jon,” she says, in a disarming sort of way, voice free and melodical from speaking in whatever tongue she’d spoken to with Missandei. She doesn’t appear as Queen. She appears only as a woman, with a somewhat fond look on her face at the sight of him.  
  
“Sorry,” he says as he walks over, always uncomfortable with interrupting conversations. “I was heading to see Tyrion.”  
  
Understanding passes over her face. “Ah, he’s throwing a party as I heard it. Or as he would say, an intimate gathering of the most noble bastards. There’s sure to be wine.”  
  
“Oh, I didn’t know.”

Her eyes fall on the tome under his hand, and the freedom with which she spoke fades, her expression smoothing into polite, practiced, curiosity. “Light reading?”  
  
Jon shakes his head. “A friend from the Night’s Watch brought it over.” Perhaps, he considers, Daenerys should be the one to know first. “It contains pertinent information to my family and yours.”  
  
“Have you seen what it is?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
She exhales, as if resigning herself to another duty she must do before resting. She looks at Missandei and something goes unspoken between them that has the other woman nodding.

Daenerys sidles up next to Jon then, grabs his bicep, and says, “Let’s walk, shall we?”  
  
Jon doesn’t particularly have any wish to tell the Queen no. Her grip isn’t strong but it’s felt as they cruise through the hallways. She has a much better knowledge of the hallways than him, though she should have had far less time to get acquainted with the Keep.

“You don’t often call people friends. This information, then, is to be trusted?”  
  
“I sent him to be a maester originally, after Maester Aemon passed.” Jon considers his words then continues, “Your father was his nephew.”  
  
Daenerys’ eyes fly open at that, looking at him as if she might strike him if he is to say the wrong thing.  
  
“He told me this, when I heard my father was imprisoned. He stopped me from deserting the Watch. He made me remember my vows -- when you join the Brotherhood you give up your name and everything you do becomes in service of the Watch.”  
  
“I highly doubt Robert Baratheon would have cared about vows then,” she replies. He sees the shock on Daenerys’ face, but she schools it quickly.  
  
“Lord Commander Jeor Mormont hid it, and nobody thought to look for Targeryans on the Wall.”

Something passes over her face, a shadow perhaps, or a memory. “Ever since my brother died I thought I was the last Targeryan. Perhaps fate will be kind and give me another brother instead.”  
  
“How did he die?”  
  
Her lips thinned for a moment, before she took a breath and lifted her chin. “He kept insisting he wanted a crown. My husband, Khal Drogo, decided to give him one he’d remember.”  
  
They descend looping towers of stairs until they reach the floors under the keep. Unlike the top parts filled with rooms and hallways the halls underneath are large, spacious, lit with torches every three steps, and absolutely silent. The two of them disturb that silence with their soft steps on the ancient stone, as they move past the stairwell.  
  
The air and dust stir, the torches flicker at their passing. They’re all -- Jon realises -- absolutely filled with dragon bones. It’s a mausoleum, just like the crypts under Winterfell.  
  
They pass those towering giants of bone and shadow, until Daenerys decides to sweet her gown aside and sit on one of the many benches. Whatever these halls were originally for, the purpose has been lost. The darkness is oppressive here, and so thick, the halls so hollow and large, Jon imagines he can hear a quiet growl in the distance, and feel hot breath of a beast on his neck and the sharpness of its teeth.  
  
The shadows dance. Much can be hidden within them. Still, there must be a reason why Daenerys brought him down here.

  
He sits with her, opens the book to the marked page, and lets her read. Allowing her to take in the information for herself allows him to remain silent after her breaths has caught, and her eyes widened, and she has looked up at him.

  
“It’s all been a lie,” she says.  
  
“And somebody lied,” Jon agrees.  
  
She touches the pages. “We might have never needed to leave. I might--” Daenerys cuts herself off, grief strong but restrained. No use, Jon knows, in dealing in what-ifs, and might-haves.  
  
“I didn’t know Rhaegar,” she finally says, “but I heard stories about him. He was a poet, a bard, a gentle sort of person. I didn’t want to believe that which everyone accused him of.”

Her watery, pale, old eyes turn to him. “Thank you,” she says, and it rings honest and true.  
  
Jon nods, but says, “Thank Sam. He found this, in the Citadel. He brought it to me. And he brought the same sort of piece to the Starks. My father loved her so much and we all thought that a great injustice was done upon her.”  
  
“I heard she’d been beautiful,” Daenerys says. Then smiles, adding, “And wild.”  
  
Jon lets himself chuckle softly. “It’s the wolf blood in us.”

The same wolf blood that he has as well, the same wolf blood that, once, made him impervious to the cold. Though, he supposes, he doesn’t feel anything anymore -- not the cold and not the warmth. Perhaps now that he has survived an icy lake he might live through hot coals as well.  
  
“As the story goes, Rhaegar gave her the garland of winter roses. Father said she always loved them the most.”  
  
“Winter roses?”  
  
“Yes, pale, frost blue with a sweet scent. In Winterfell’s glass gardens, Catelyn used to work on them. Perhaps Sansa has taken up to task now.”  
  
Daenerys looks at him now, a strange expression on her face. He doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t understand her or know her as well as he should to know what her expressions mean. All that he knows is that her eyes soften, go distanant, and dance away to the shadows.  
  
“Strange,” is what she says in the end. “I have seen the purple-lipped warlocks of Qarth, red priestesses and shadow women from the lands beyond Asshai, and I have passed beneath the shadow myself and hatches three dragons eggs. Yet, I have never heard of Winter roses before.”  
  
“When you come to Winterfell,” Jon promises, “I will take you to see them.”  
  
Daenerys turns to him with a smile. “Will you leave the book in my care?”  
  
Jon considers it but ultimately, he knows he cannot say no. He nods in agreement instead.

“Thank you,” she repeats. “Now, we should go up, lest the mouths start running about what we’ve been doing here, and your husband comes to defend your honor.”  
  
Jon laughs. “I think the only honor here worth defending is yours.”  
  
Daenerys looks stricken, and her expression softens. “That’s sweet, but what can they say about a woman who has been married twice now?”  
  
“My sister has been married twice, and they cannot say anything about her at all.”

  
Daenerys laughs, and accepts his hand as a help to stand. They walk beside the cleaned bones, and teeth, beyond the shadows of the past, moving back towards the stairwell.  
  
“I saw you collapse. Tormund would not say what ails you.”

  
  
Jon stops and she turns to look at him. Here, in the whispers of whispers, he admits, out loud, “The first time I died the Red Priestess brought me back. Then I died again, in that lake beyond the Wall, and she was miles away. Whether it was the old gods, or something else entirely, they also took a part of me with them.”  
  
Daenerys’ lips thin.  
  
“I don’t know how much time I have left.”

She acknowledges this with her silence. Others might have mocked him. But she, it seems, believes. They start walking again.

“Do you believe in magic, Jon?”  
  
“Difficult not to, considering.”  
  
She grabs his wrist as they begin climbing the stairs.

“A long time ago,” she says, “in another life, I was a married woman with child. A long time ago, my husband was injured, the wound was infected, and a witch wanted to help me.”  
  
She turns to look at him, and her grip on his wrist becomes scorching as no fire can burn him.

“Shadows danced, that day, in my tent. Shadows, dead things, death itself, screaming, howling. I lost the child. I lost Drogo too. I thought I lost myself as well. And so, I laid on his pire, with my dragon eggs, and I thought I’d die.”  
  
Jon doesn’t understand, but as they begin moving again, the exit appears in the distance quicker than he felt the descent.  
  
“Perhaps,” she says, “this isn’t an end. Perhaps this cold of yours might be an entirely new beginning.”

Jon wishes he could believe her but he knows well enough by knows that he has gambled away any lives he previously had. The Starks were never lucky, and he will not be graced with the comforts of dying of old age. He was brought back for a reason. Once that reason is fulfilled he knows his journey will be over.  
  
Once they reach the top of the stairs she stops.

“Tomorrow I’m calling the small council. The stormlands have sent a raven ahead, their lords will be arriving shortly to present themselves. With Dorne’s forces in the Reach, ready to march at the drop of the pin, Ser Jamie organizing the King’s Landing troops and support from the West, and your sister emptying out the Riverlands and the Reach, we might have ourselves a sizable army after all.”

“We’ll get there Jon,” she promises. “I’ll get you there before...before.”  
  
It’s a good promise.

-

Daenerys departs with a sullen seriousness, a tight expression on her face, and eyes that seem only a moment from watering. He doesn’t deserve her softness.

Wrong footed, feeling too raw from his confessions, and too tired for hope, Jon decides to turn his feet towards Tyrion’s chambers once more, only this time in search of distraction. The guards at the entrance recognize him, and he passes through the chambers lead by the loud voices.

The terrace Tyrion’s occupied for his gathering is shielded from two sides by large crimsons screens, pitched in something that would have been tent-like if it weren’t so expensive. The use of it Jon doesn’t really understand except perhaps to create a semblance of privacy, divert wandering eyes which aren’t in the Keep any longer anyway, and discourage the wind to interrupt them. The two opened sides overlook the stairs and the entrance, while the view, as most views from the Keep, are turned towards the walls and the sea.

There are no chairs. Not like any Jon’s seen in the south at least. Instead, the ground has been covered in layers of soft leather, furs, and carpets, and fit with cushions and pillows. The only raised thing is a strange half-bed across which Ellaria Sand has decided to stretch and warm her feet by the only brazier is sight, and the tables that hold, among other things, dried fruit, nuts, jerky, and roast meats. There’s even fresh fruit piled in the center, and there are jugs of wine that anyone can pour from, and more in the back. Whatever these comfort are, they’re obviously important from the east.

As he approaches, he notes that between Ellaria Sand and Jorah, sits Yara Greyjoy, comfortable to lean on piles of large, embroidered, golden and red pillows, mouth working on nuts and wine in tandem, when not twisted in dirty amusement. There’s no sight of her brother. Jon hasn’t seen him, in fact, since the throne room. Podrick, sits next to her, a little behind so not to be so in the eye, and next to him are a man Jon hasn’t seen before and Tyrion, forming a half-circle, broken only by the entrance to their little gathering. Davos sits near the entrance on the other side with Tormund, and at Ellaria’s feet sits Clegane, leaning heavily against the frame.

He isn’t noticed immediately, and soon Jon understands why. Tormund is telling a story, and one Jon’s heard this story before from Karsi, a lifetime ago now, when he’d been drunk on rkhja and ready to retch.  
  
He folds his hands together and observes Tormund in his full element. It’s been too long since he’s seen him like this, doing what he likes doing best: drinking, eating, and telling stories. He has everyone’s attention, despite the disgusted look on Ellaria’s face, and the gleeful expression on Yara’s.

Jon doesn’t mind standing until he’s finished speaking, and the crowd has either laughed or moaned in disgust, and they’d all clamoured down.  
  
“You,” the man next to Tyrion says, “Are one sick fuck.”  
  
Tormund grins. “Oh you haven’t heard the last of it.”  
  
“I really hope we did,” Ellaria said in reply, much to Jorah’s amusement, who chuckled heartily.

Jon decides to make himself known and does so by saying, “I take it Tormund’s been telling stories all night?”  
  
Tyrion and his friend startle at once, and turn to look at him.  
  
“Jon,” Tyrion says, “Apologies, we haven’t heard you enter. A tad bit preoccupied with- ah your friend here.”

“Malamuk’s Head is a very good story.”  
  
“I take it you’ve heard it before,” Tyrion says with a wry twist of his mouth. “Would you like to join us? Perhaps we can drink enough to forget the details.”  
  
Jon’s mouth curls up in a gentle smile.

“Drinking on the job, Lord Tyrion?” he says even as he nods, looking where he could situate himself comfortably. There’s space for another person or two, but he’s weighing out whether he should sit between Clegane and Tormund, or he and Davos.  
  
“That’s my job, as you well know,” Tyrion replies, catching on his meaning and insinuation.  
  
“Pod,” Tyrion turns, “Get a goblet for King Snow won’t you?”  
  
Jon hums and looks at the people gathered there. “Unless you’ve decided to hold court, Snow is fine.”  
  
Davos perks up at that, obviously ready to give Jon a disapproving eyebrow which Jon tactically ignores as he passes by the man, to get to Tormund.  
  
“ _You’re always welcome to sit on my lap,”_ Tormund says in the old tongue. Jon isn’t sure whether it’s for privacy or just because they’re so used to speaking in it with each other. _  
_ _  
_ Jon doesn’t color in the face. He doesn’t do that anymore, only really when they’re having sex now, and it’s faint. Still, he feels a faint buzz on his cheeks when he replies, “ _I’m not sitting in your lap, Tormund. How much have you had to drink?”_

 _“Only enough to recall that you were doing it so nicely this morning.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“You were complaining about it last I recall.”_

Jon accepts his goblet and takes a demonstrative seat on his left, more space left between Tormund and Clegane.

Tyrion looks between then and asks, “Everything alright?”

Jon looks back at him quizzically, and realises just as Tormund does, that Tyrion only heard them speaking in a strange language, and it must have sounded tense.  
  
“Of course,” Jon replies, while Tormund grabs at one of the carafes to pour wine for him.  
  
Usually, Jon isn’t a drinker but he does take a cursory sip. The wine is sweet and heady, that sort of that has to be diluted with water yet, knowing Tyrion, it certainly isn’t.

“I thought you might have wanted to join us sooner,” Tyrion says in a gentle way of asking about his day.

Jon, however, doesn’t shy away from replying, “Apologies. I had a guest. A brother from the watch who’d I sent to the citadel to become Maester. I don’t think you will remember him from when you were on the Wall, but his name is Samwell Tarlly.”

A strange look passes over Tyrion’s face. “Not that I recall, no.”  
  
“I do,” Jorah says, voice piercing if not loud. “I was in the Citadel when he was there, locked up for greyscale. He took a chance. I owe him my life.”  
  


Jon’s smile grows, unable to not feel proud with Sam. “You might want to look for him tomorrow, if you wish to talk, before he befalls the library.”

Jorah chuckles. “I will.”

Jon takes another sip of his wine and he glances at Tormund.  
  
“ _Everything alright_ ?” Tormund asks.  
  
“ _He had news and not all good.”_ Jon’s mouth formed a single thin line when he presses them together. Before he sighs. “ _He brought evidence that the war that killed the Queen’s family was started on a lie.”_

Tormund doesn’t look surprised by this. In fact, he looks far from it. He also looks pleasantly flushed from drinking all night and his eyes are soft and glassy, mouth curled in one of his tender smiles. So relaxed, with his back against pillows, he looks the closest to the Free Folk chieftain he’d once known, despite the clothes and the circumstance. Jon wishes he could kiss him now.  
  
“ _Shall we go to our room?”_ Tormund asks, voice dry with humour, noticing, as always, whenever Jon looked at him with intention. _  
_ _  
_ Jon shakes his head. His mouth twisted then, eyes creasing in corners. “ _Get drunk while we still have time. We did want to go south. It’s not Dorne but--”_ _  
  
_

They laugh at their own expense and Jon takes another large gulp of his wine. He never found solutions in wine, but this night he isn’t looking for any. All he is looking for is distraction, company, and to waste time.

When he turns to look at other people at the gathering does he see the vague glances thrown towards them while they speak amongst each other. Some words, of course, can’t be translated into old tongue, but Dorne will always be Dorne.  
  
Jon becomes aware of their lapsus and apologises.  
  
“Not at all,” Ellaria says. “But I am most curious on your topic of Dorne.”

  
“After my duties as the Lord Commander of the watch were over I had plans to go to Dorne. See the beaches, warm myself up.”

“We only got so far to King’s Landing though,” Tormund adds.

“Ah,” Ellaria exclaims, nodding. “You got a shit deal.”  
  
Jon laughs softly. “I know but it’s best considering the circumstances.”

“Well, if we somehow manage to survive fighting those beasts, you’re welcome to visit. The sun would do you some good, Snow. You’re as pale as your namesake.”

Jon chuckles, and Tormund gives him a knowing look. “Thank you.”  
  
“ _You weren’t pale yesterday when you were riding me, or this morning when I mounted you. In fact I’m sure--”_ _  
_ _  
_ “Tormund,” Jon says, in an effort to stop him. He can hear his laugh when he closes his eyes and sighs, “Gods.”  
  
It’s a good thing, Jon tells himself, that Tormund’s taking it with jest. When he’d come back to himself in his room, he’d felt feverish, lost to reason until he had his hands around Tormund’s neck, and his warm hands on him. It only spiralled from there. Jon knows he pushed for more, far more than he ever did before at least, but it had been disheartening to discover that he couldn’t even feel pleasure as before. Compensation lead to two days lost in bed.

Tormund grins and Jon sighs and shakes his head. “You’re really--”  
  
“Funny?” Tormund offers.  
  
“Incorrigible more like.”

Tormund clicks their goblets together and they drink.

#### -

The world quickly becomes fuzzy. The voices mix, except if it’s Yara’s loud cackle or Tormund’s whisper about something or other in his ear. Cotton has filled his head, lead arrested his tongue, but for the first time in a while, Jon feels good. He rests, looking at the people in front of him, listening to their stories. It’s not so difficult listening to Tyrion’s voice when he complains about Jorah’s treatment the first time they met, nor Jorah’s sarcastic replies. The other man, who’s name turns out to be Bron, ribs Podrick when not laughing at Tyrion, and Ellaria’s commentary is dry and amusing enough to even have Clegane laugh. Yara’s talk of pirating and sailing has him drifting off, thinking about the seas beyond the Wall, the ice, and the beauty that he wants to return to no matter what.

Softly, Tormund wraps his fingers around his wrist and says, “ _Vranjska_ .”  
  


Jon blinks and looks up at Tormund, who has such a thunderous expression on his face, Jon knows it can be nothing but heartbreak. And he knows, now, that he’d wandered off again, chased the rabbit into the woods, and it has taken him too long to come back.  
  


Somebody shouts, another voice cheers, and Jon hears himself being called. Tormund’s eyes strey from his to someone else, and Jon is watching as his expression lights up, a grin rady.  
  
“You’d be surprised to know,” he says, “that the first time Jon saw me he knelt and said ‘your Grace’.”  
  
“What?” cawks Bron. “Just all of a sudden? Goes to his knees and ‘your-grace’s’ you? I don’t even get that from--”  
  
He seems to want to say more but Jon turns towards their companions just in time to see Tyrion hit him in the arm.  
  
Tormund laughs. “I just have that effect on people--”

“It was Mance Rayder’s--The King-Beyond-the-Wall’s--camp. I thought Tormund was him,” Jon explains rising his voice, cutting Tormund off. “The first thing _he_ told me was that he was going to pull my guts out through my throat if I ever lied to him.”  
  
“I was being gentle about it!” Tormund protests.  
  
Tyrion’s face says it all, from his crumpled expression to his raised eyebrows.  
  


“Gentle isn’t how I would have described you then,” Jon says amused, and adds in the old tongue, “ _Now that I remember it, you were quite handsome then. Don’t know how I didn’t notice.”_

He thinks of it as a joke, but he watches, nonetheless, as Tormund’s face loses his jovial charm, and grows serious and soft, glazed eyes alert and stark blue and honest. Jon’s heart hitches a fit, deciding to beat faster now than in middle of battle. There is a sort of reverence in Tormund’s voice when he says, “ _I’m glad you did_ .”  
  
It guts Jon, and lets all of his feelings that he’d been keeping safe loose in his belly, afflicting his lungs so his breath shortens and lets them bloom in his eyes. It feels now that he spent more time having Tormund by his side then without, and it still feels so new, so fragile. They’re not men of words, yet he cannot kiss Tormund not to tell him he understands. But Tormund has it wrong. It isn’t Jon that picked or chose anyone, it’s Tormund that decided to open those doors and let Jon walk through them. He doesn’t deserve this. He is, in turn, impossibly glad to have it.

When Jon thought of marriage, and he thought very little of it except what was expected of him as a man but also as a bastard, he never thought it would be like this. His father’s and Catelyn Stark’s example was a loving but terse, and incredibly conservative sort of affair that--he supposes-- would have been better were he not in Winterfell reminding Catelyn of Eddard’s unfaithfulness. But he knew, even there, love had come later. People in great houses like Tully and Stark married for power, for politics, for money, for leverage. Love was reserved for those who had nothing to gamble and nothing to gain. It’s why when he thought of marriage as a bond that’s more law than love, and then in the Night’s Watch he didn’t think any more of it at all. He had given up that right when he took his oath.  
  
He doubts now, that he would have ever married even if he remained in Winterfell. Catelyn’s first and one worry was him and his children trying to claim Winterfell and it’s riches, and he never would have done that to begin with -- he loved his brothers and sisters too much to make even more bastard children.  
  
Jon’s realising, slowly, that marriage isn’t so strict and serious as he was led to believe. It’s not solemn, stuffy nor tedious. The rules of formal conduct have been dismissed by their peculiar situation: Jon a bastard, Tormund a Free Folk, and both of them men. Pruning away the excess, only the important bits remain. Seriousness is reserved only for their commitment to each other. The rest of marriage is just the eagerness and anticipation, but also a promise, of meeting your favorite person every day, month, and year you wake up--be it in their bed or miles away--and releasing all over again that you adore them in all different iterations of themselves. Marriage is knowing you’re their favorite person as well, and realising that no matter how you change--and you so often wish to change for the better--they will be there to love you and support you. Marriage is letting yourself be childish, to laugh easily, to be happy, to be silly, and to love easily, and trusting that it’s safe to do so.

He thought marriage subdued these feelings in his chest and his desires, but it has done neither. It has just allowed them to grow, mature, and give comfort to all the raw edges that come with allowing yourself to be known. Because Tormund knows him now, he sees him, and he has him. If nothing else, Jon has always felt _held_ by him.

Somebody laughs and it triggers Jon’s own huff. He looks away, blinking until his eyes have dried, Then there’s more wine, and the world decided to blur again, until he feels a hand around his shoulders. Tormund. Jon curls into him, head pressed and hidden in his shoulder.

There are quiet murmurs, and Tormund loud voice. “If you fuckers utter--” But then, closer, in a near whisper that has always comforted him during nights, he murmurs, “Sleep, _vranjska_ . Just sleep.”  
  
In his warm embrace, Jon drifts off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly this took too long to write and I call it "a lot of dialogue and no exposition". Thank you as always, for reading. I'm looking forward to finishing this series. The last part of the series is currently a WIP and I'm really looking forward to wrapping everything up from fixing the Battle of Winterfell, the deaths, the --frankly--terrible use of White Walkers and not having Jon battle the Night King, the dragons, explaining the magic, and finally writing the ending to their relationship.


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